Reading Update

Fairies of Dreamdark, Taylor

I actually really like this book! I was a bit dubious when it started and found it was about fairies. Because those are often rather childish (which is a silly thing for me to think - there are a few books/movies I love that feature fairies). But this was really well done.

Then I read the second book, and it was good too. It was interesting that the original protagonist had more of a supporting role, but it worked. But there's been quite a gap, and the third book's not out yet TT^TT With a cliffhanger too!

The Life of Pi, Martel

I was really impressed with how well this book discussed animal behavior. He did his research. And I can't help thinking. If the "second story" is true, how did he come up with the tiger story? Some sort of coping mechanism? 

Prelude to Foundation, Asimov

Hmm. This entire book was based off of a very flimsy theory that one guy might discover something important someday. The author seems to do this kind of thing a lot - basing a whole book on something hypothetical.

Sacred Horses: The memoirs of a Turkmen cowboy, Maslow

I read this because I thought it would be about horses. But it was more about Turkmenistan. It was interesting though, because this was written by one of the first foreigners to visit the country in a long time. There was some interesting stuff about culture and language. 

Thief's Magic, Canavan

This book started out with a student digging around in a tomb and stealing stuff as part of his studies. It made me cringe. But then later on, I was relieved when they acknowledged that this was a messed up way for a school to use its students. I was surprised that the two main stories never actually linked up. I suppose they will later on, but I don't think I'll keep reading this series. I have too many books to read, and this one didn't hook me as much.

The Rise of Kyoshi and The Shadow of Kyoshi, Yee

A pair of books based on Avatar: The Last Airbender.  They were pretty good too. They tell the story of Avatar Kyoshi's time learning to be the Avatar.

Ronia, the Robber's Daughter, Lindgren

I read this one because there's a series based off of it that I want to watch. It's a small book, so I was surprised that there's a full series made off of it. But I think I can kind of picture how they'd do it (well, I'm actually picturing how a particular director would do the series - the actual director will probably have his own style).

Spinning Silver, Novik

A very well-developed fantasy story. It took me a while to get into it, but I was impressed. It's the first of her books I read that wasn't Temeraire, and I was surprised how different it was. I wonder how all of the unusual marriages work out in the long run.

The Lost City of Z, Grann

I read this in preparation for my Peru trip. Man, I'll tell you, this book will definitely scare you into wearing bug spray. And it's remarkable how bad these early explorers were at exploring. 

Ecotopia, Callenbach

In which a reporter visits a region that has completely devoted itself to sustainable living. That region is the western edge of the United States. Heh. I wish.

Spirit Animals: the Evertree, Lu

I finally finished the Spirit Animals series. The ending felt... very phony. Kinda falsely bittersweet somehow. I dunno.

The Darkest Road, Kay

I kept hearing everyone gush about how awesome this series was. I listened to the audio books, and at one point in the second book, I think I spaced out and missed some of what was happening. I was never able to get fully back on track from there. Maybe that's why it felt overly complicated. It kind of rubbed me the wrong way that King Arthur and company were involved (maybe because in high school, I wrote a story where Arthur comes back).

Dragon Slippers, George

Interesting. but it had one of those sassy protagonist girls that has no control over her mouth. It seems like it should have gotten her into a lot more trouble.

H is for Hawk, MacDonald

The true story of a falconer and her goshawk. She parallels her story to TH White (the guy who wrote The Once and Future King - which Disney's The Sword and the Stone is based off of).

The Good Thieves, Rundell

This book had a very similar feel to the other book of theirs I read. I could tell right away they were by the same person.

Love Breaks Barriers

Animals are so different from each other. From great cats that can hunt wild buffalo, to legless serpents that swallow prey whole, to eight legged giant spiders. It blows my mind that through this immense diversity, each of these predators - some of which aren't even social - can learn to enjoy and even love human company. 

While lions are never going to be a house pet and can be dangerous even accidentally, they can be raised to love their human pride. My ball python Lan loves to meet new people, even though my cat is afraid of strangers. I once brought Lan to a get-together where a group of people sat with me to visit him. He calmly crawled across all of their laps, checking them out. He also likes to crawl around my computer desk while I'm working. He doesn't leave, but is just hanging out. And the zoo has a tarantula that will calmly let herself get picked up, and sit on your lap and get pet. She's silky soft. 

Raising animals with love can cross species barriers all across the animal kingdom. 

(DISCLAIMER - that does not mean that any animal can be a pet. Stick with domestic animals! Unless you are one of the rare people qualified to do otherwise, like at a zoo or something.)

 

And here is the dose of animal photos! Only one of these animals is domestic. (And I've finally finished throwing out all of the ones from last year. Which promptly puts me three months behind for this year. But that's better than a year behind!)

Pygmy hippo

Zebra

Miniature donkey

What's Playing on Disney

Every now and then I sign up for a month of Disney Plus.

I watched some of the new Star Wars shows. I liked Mandalorian a lot, and Boba Fett too. But the Obi Wan show felt depressing. It was hard watching Obi Wan living in such misery for so many years. And the main villain was really confusing? 

 

I'm not sure yet if I like Andor. I suppose I'll know after the second season. There were a lot of characters and it was hard to keep track of everything that was going on. 

I watched a couple Disney Channel movies, which I ended up liking a lot. There were three of them which are based off of actual events: The Color of Friendship, Ruby Bridges, and Miracle at Midnight. I'd never heard of the movies before I saw them here, and I wasn't familiar with the events they centered around. But they were all amazing.

This last Disney Channel movie is not based on real events. It must have been a hit because I've heard of it many times, and it lead to much more. It's called Descendants. I ended up enjoying it a lot. It was tacky, but in a cute way. And Kristen Chenowith was fabulous. I'd never seen her as a villain before. (And another made-for-TV Disney movie is always worth mentioning: the 90's Cinderella!)

Then I tried a couple series that were continuations of Disney movies I love: Big Hero Six and Tangled. They had really cute animation. The Big Hero Six one was fun because I just enjoyed watching the characters. The plots were not as interesting. It devolved the further it went until the end was just ridiculous. Tangled was more cohesive. Though it also had stranger and stranger stuff happen further on. But the whole last season felt really sloppy with Cass. That whole arc didn't make sense to me at all. But there was some fun music! I like the drunken buddy song. (And I swear the way they animated Adira's movements are just like those of Mulan)

YANovCon 2023

I went to YANovCon this year again. It's always so inspiring to hear the writers talk. They have amazing stories, and it also makes me want to write (I took some notes of the highlights, and typed them up here so I could catch up later. And then the website decided to wipe out every word on the post. I'll see what I can remember since the event happened a few weeks ago). 

This year's theme was how family shapes your identity. The authors had a lot of touching personal stories. Like how one of them as a teenager finally told his mom that he was gay. His mom stormed out of the restaurant, left him there and didn't talk to him for months. And today, she'd leading pride parades. Even if things start off bad, people can change for the better and learn to accept.

I always love getting to talk to the authors after. Even if it's just a few words. Bill Konigsberg signed his book for me. James Brandon gave me writing encouragement. And I think it was Sarah Kuhn who I started talking to about Turning Red, because we liked how they did Ming, the mom. Sarah Kuhn been talking about the portrayal of tiger moms, and how they deserved to have proper character - not just be stereotypes. Ming is a amazing example of that.

Though she's kinda the main antagonist in the movie, I like her a lot. She can be quirky, and she really does care. Even if it's not manifesting in a great way. 

(I had all these author names written down before. I think these are the right people!)

I love movie soundtracks. I listen to them all the time. 

Sometimes the music on the official soundtrack includes bits of dialogue. Sometimes this works, if it fits into the songs. But sometimes there's just random dialogue, which totally distracts from the music. I wonder what the deal is.

Well, I'm officially pissed off at this blog website. It randomly decided to delete all of the text from one of my blog drafts. It would not let me undo the delete. Then it saved it as an empty document within about a second.  So all of the notes I took during a writing event (which I carefully typed in a draft) are gone. Now I don't remember what half of them were. 

What the hell, blog company? Now I'm afraid to save any drafts for posts.Even better, I can't find any way to report it, or contact the blog staff at all. 

I wonder how much I'll be able to scrape back together. Not much.

All the Same Babies

In recently found two cute web comics about Mewtwo and baby Mewtwos. 

I've had my own baby Mewtwo character for a very long time. Over ten years. And there's no way I'm the first. 

(This picture is from 2012)

I've noticed some very strange similarities between my Mewtwo characters and these two series. For example, my baby Mewtwo is supposed to get two little sisters: twins. I posted a picture of them on DA (pause while I look up the date) in 2017. Though they haven't actually appeared in my fanfic yet, because they haven't been born yet. But one of the series has two babies (also yet to be born in the main series, oddly enough, that have the exact same two names. 

And the other series has Mewtwo wearing the same outfit I made for him.

Do I think they copied me? I highly doubt it. Not many people look at my art page @_@ 

Though to be fair, the names for the twins are pretty straight forward. And the Mewtwo outfit is similar to one he wore in his second movie. But it is a pair of really bizarre coincidences.

Matching the Voices

Audio books have an interesting relationship with accents. A lot of the time, the reader doesn't bother to match the accent of a character. Which is fine. The reader can have a good reading voice, but may not want to risk butchering the accent of another country. Sometimes the reader is from the same place where the book is set, which adds a nice authenticity. 

What does bother me is when they use blatantly wrong accents. 

Usually if a reader does use accents for different characters, it's just European accents. But I just listened to an audio book where he did good accents from around the world! Not just European, but from South America and Africa, etc. I was definitely impressed (though I honestly didn't care about the rest of the book).

 

Another photo dump!

Snow leopard - flehmen (aka stink face)

Lion

Meerkat Christmas party

Chunky winter grizzly bear

It's all in Their Head

When I was watching the bonus features on The Chronicles of Narnia, they said something that caught me off guard. People sometimes read The Chronicles of Narnia as though it were all made up by the kids.

I never once thought that while reading the books. It feels like an almost condescending view of the kids. Acting as though they just made it all up. Look how upset Lucy is when she's accused of that? And then someone else ends up denying Narnia in the last book (which always makes me angry). It sort of stops being a fantasy if you read it like that. It's not a real world - it's just a story kids are telling each other. It means that none of the stakes really matter. Because all of those characters are imaginary.

But it's not uncommon for this to happen in movies and books- to have a story that isn't actually happening. The Wizard of Oz film takes place in a dream. Which is odd, because that was not the case in the book. Dorothy really went to Oz. The movie Mirrormask did something different. It was a dream, but the protagonist knew it was a dream. She found meaning in it despite knowing that it wasn't real.

Then you get things like Calvin and Hobbes. It seems obvious that Hobbes isn't really alive and walking around - Calvin only imagines him that way. But then again, Calvin does things with Hobbes which doesn't seem possible if he were really on his own. So, is Hobbes alive or not? And yeah, I may be over-reading this one.

But The Life of Pi addresses this directly. Do you trust the kids to tell the true story? Or do want the easier explanation - that he just made it all up.

How to Skip Work

So, in Harry Potter,  Fred and George make "skiving snack boxes." These are full of treats that do different things. For example, one type will give you a bloody nose. This lets you get out of class. Then once you're out of class, you eat the other end of the treat, and it cures your nose. There are various maladies you can get, like fever or vomiting.

So imagine my surprise when I went to clock in at work and saw a Skiving snack box on the table. I guess some people wanted to get out of work.